Corify

Project Overview Purpose

Change is the only constant we experience, measured quietly but relentlessly by time. Life can feel overwhelmingly long and impossibly short all at once, and in that rush, we often forget to hold onto the moments that shape us. The small memories that lifted our mood, clarified our purpose, shifted our identity, or helped us grow.

Corify was created to preserve these moments. Offering a personal space to document your life authentically, especially during university or college, where countless experiences unfold in a short span.

The platform encourages users not just to write their thoughts and feelings, but also to enrich them with features that capture emotional context that transform everyday experiences into meaningful, cherished memories.

Corify exists to help people see themselves, not just the polished lives of others and keep their core memories close, safe, and alive over time.

Audience

Being undergraduate students ourselves, we designed Corify first and foremost for university and college students, but in a way that feels approachable for anyone of all ages. As we mentioned in our purpose, this life stage is uniquely intense: “countless experiences unfold in a short span [of time]” as we gain independence, experiment with identity, and start to figure out who we are.

The idea of recording one’s life is not new. Diaries and journals have existed for centuries. One of the earliest known examples, Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, was written in the early 1400s. Over time, this practice has evolved into formats like phonebooks, scrapbooks, and other personal record-keeping tools. Across generations and age groups, people have used these mediums to log their thoughts, document their days, and make sense of important events.

Corify builds on this long tradition of journaling, reimagining it for a digital, emotionally aware era, especially for students navigating some of the most defining years of their lives.

Goals

Our overarching aim is to build a platform where university students can creatively preservice their memories. By enabling users to associate memories with emotions, scents, images, music, and more, the platform captures the deeper context around their experiences rather than just what happened.

We want journaling to feel intuitive, enjoyable, and frictionless, so that it becomes a natural part of students’ lives rather than a chore. At the same time, the platform is designed to encourage long-term reflection and personal growth by helping users look back and understand how their thoughts, feelings, and identities evolve over time.

In contrast to the constant noise of social media, it provides a quiet, intentional space that reduces digital distraction and redirects attention inward. Above all, it empowers users to document their lives authentically, without the pressure to perform or curate themselves for an audience.

Research and Insights

Our research was inspired in part by a Tiktok trend where people share photos that evoke a sense of smell tied to specific memories. For example, the picture to the right includes images of BBQ, solar notes, and coconut water instantly recreates the feeling of a warm summer night. This showed us that memories are often recalled through layered sensory cues rather than just visuals, which informed our decision to let users attach not only images, but also music, notes, and other elements that bring the moment “back to life.”

The colour palette in Corify is inspired by Inside Out, where each emotion is represented by a distinct color, such as yellow for joy and blue for sadness. We use a similar approach so that colors subtly mirror the emotional tone of a core, helping users intuitively feel the mood of a memory at a glance. This idea worked especially well for our mascot, who is designed in yellow and blue, reflecting what we see as two of the most important and prominent emotions: joy and sadness.

Initial Mockups

Page 1: User is introduced to the UI/UX mascot.

Page 2: As a new user, they are navigated to the bottom right interface. The page provides a shelf with empty orbs, where the user is encouraged to play around and click on one of the empty grey orbs and it will navigate the user to the core creation page.

Page 3: The interface on the top right corner is an example page of an uncompleted core. Users are provided with images, keynotes, stickers, music buttons that they can add, save, delete however they wish. If the back button is clicked on that specific page, the user will be taken back to the shelf, but this time the orb is colored since it’s been completed. However, if the back button is pressed when the core isn’t yet complete, it will bring them back to the bottom right interface with no complete cores.

Page 4: The page with complete cores and the new page that the user will see whenever they open Corify.

Iterations

Accuracy From a UX standpoint, our mentor Ricky Zhang highlighted that memories are subjective and not everybody will have photos of everything they want to capture. This can make recreating a scene a bit challenging.

Iteration: We explored how to make this feature flexible. Instead of requiring images, users can opt for stickers, text, and other elements to capture the moment.

Accessibility It was noted that some users may feel overwhelmed and unsure where to begin when creating a Core Memory. To help users get started, our mentor suggested templates that people can drop photos or elements into, reducing the pressure from building a memory page from scratch.

Iteration: Users are provided with a Core Creation page where key elements, such as music, notes, fragrance tags, and visual elements, already have been placed. This acts as a built-in template.

Built With

• figma
• procreate